Election 2016 (Page 22)

I found the debates enjoyable.  Both candidates had good and bad moments. 

All the spin now is on who 'won' the debate.  The ONLY metric that can be used to measure that are the polls.  So in a few days we might know if either candidate moved the needle.

I was on the debate team in college and traveled around the country competing in speech and debate tournaments.  I don't know what you call what they were doing last night but it was not debating.  A formal debate follows very strict rules on what gets discussed when and it you veer off course it costs you points.  So when they asked Trump about race relations and he talked about law and order, he would have lost points. 

I was not really surprised by anything last night.  Hillary was very scripted and recited a lot of memorized lines but I expected that. Trump tended to stray off topic and ramble but I expected that.

I think Trumps best moments was when he was citing trade deficit numbers and talking about 16 trillion in trade deficit and how that could be used to rebuild our infrastructures.  Also liked that he mentioned airports!  He is right about that.  I flew thru Qatar a couple of years ago and their airport was beautiful!  Went thru LaGuardia and Newark airports a few weeks ago and Trump is right, they look 3rd world.  We can do better.

I had read last week they were making a custom podium for Hillary to improve her stature.  Not sure that is fair.  What if Trump asked for special lighting so his hair didn't look so yellow?

Anyway, they had the same backdrop.....but notice that Hillary's head is two line higher than Trump's.  She obviously is shorter than him so it would be ridiculous to just raise her up on a stool.....so they raised the podium and what ever she is standing on so they would appear identical on the screen.

(Clinton.jpg)

(Trump.jpg)

actually her podium was shorter than his. what you are noticing may be camera angle

He podium might also be shorter than his but it is not camera angle.  In every split screenshot you can clearly see she is higher up.  I guess you could make someone appear higher if you put the camera on the floor but then you'd be looking up her nose and that was not the case.

dude, re-read what you are saying, it doesn't make sense.  Giving Hillary a larger podium would make her appear smaller.  What they actually did was give her a SMALLER podium, so that she would appear to be the same size as him.  Her camera is lower and angled upward to finish this optical illusion.  If they made a woman who is 5'4" stand on a step that made her a foot taller than a man who is 6'3", she wouldn't be able to step up onto the damn thing!

also this is old news in television, they do this all the time.

#imanengineer

^that is called a hashtag, us millenials use them.  you can use the cyber to learn about it

Hillary's head is two lines higher than Trump's? You got that backwards. Hillary's head only goes up to the line "it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it". That's mid-neck on Trump. 

Yeah, that's what I meant. She is higher up in space than he is.  Whether that is smaller podium or bigger podium or higher podium and some combination of camera angles and custom podium is not the point.  The point is the media is creating an illusion to benefit Hillary. 

It's all over...  

The buzz was kind of interesting because they seemed to have Trumps mic gained up a lot hotter to catch all the extra noises and sighs where Hillary's was dead quiet.  Trumps mic even cut out a few times which is unheard of.
I don't have a tinfoil hat on yet because it didn't matter and only Trump haters care about it.   

The debate overall went about as I expected it to.  Hillary was a robot reciting her lines and didn't connect with anyone with any solutions.
Trump was Trump and it's hard to feel that he doesn't care about people, jobs, and security.

As was mentioned earlier on points I'd say Hillary won the "debate", but that's not what matters.  What matters is how many undecided votes were changed.
I was at a debate watching party last night and the room had about 2/3 that were Cruz supporters that really didn't like Trump, but absolutely HATED Clinton.  They were rolling when Trump would do his little antics towards Clinton and by the end of the night they were all firmly in Trumps corner.  They loved the guy.

In contrast, the Hillary haters still all hate Hillary and people in the middle have little new reason to vote for her because she's still on the "he's meaner than me so vote for me" platform.

I recognize that my debate party is a snapshot of Republicans with several who didn't like Trump, but honestly that's where Trump needs to gain his support.  He's been hovering in the low 80's with Republican support and polling even or ahead.  When that number consolidates above 90% then it's beyond game over for Clinton.

Here's a NY Post Article with a similar type of story to my party experience but in a different demographic.
How Trump won over a bar full of undecideds and Democrats
Here's another story showing a consolidation of many of the online snap polls.  It's more ammo to really show the enthusiasm gap she still has to overcome.
Majority of snap polls show Trump won debate by a landslide despite CNN's overwhelming victory for Hillary in biggest official survey

If you guys recall back in the primaries the pundits would almost always say Trump did terrible, the online votes would all be near unanimous Trump win and the polls would show it within days.  In a few days we'll see if the Trump effect fully carries over to the general. 

I don't really care about the podiums, what I care about is the blatant favoritism by Lester.   No questions on Benghazi, emails, or Clinton foundation but questions about birtherism, falsely calling Trump a liar about supporting the war, and multiple other followups for Trump and zero for Clinton.  Ironically it will backfire on the media "bigly" because it plays right into Trumps hand that the media is in Hillary's pocket.  You'd think they'd learn their lesson after doing this for a year.  lol

95% of the debate was split screen. Of course their heads were going to be centered in the shot. If they used the exact same camera height and angle for the two, we would have been looking at Hillary from the nose up or Donald from the nose down. Putting the camera at a height level with each individual candidate's face would have Hillary lined up with text lower in the Declaration, which is what we saw. 

I know Hillary requested some fancy podium to offset the heights, but it was a stupid request they were making. The only people that would have seen the difference is the audience. 

Agree, I do video and audio production for our church and it's all about centering heads for transitions from one camera to the other and with split screen they have to be balanced.

http://drudgereport.com/flashnyd.htm

Trump with 83%.  To be expected from Drudge web site.

But CNBC and Time both have him winning in a landslide:

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/26/vote-who-won-the-first-presidential-debate.html

http://time.com/4506217/presidential-debate-clinton-trump-survey/

2.6 million people (combining these two polls) voted that Trump won.  Not scientific but it speaks to the enthusiasm gag.

CNN calls it for Hillary:

Hillary Clinton was deemed the winner of Monday night's debate by 62% of voters who tuned in to watch, while just 27% said they thought Donald Trump

http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/27/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-debate-poll/index.html

But drill down into the poll:

26% of the respondents who participated in tonight's survey identified themselves as Republicans, 41% identified themselves as Democrats

this was only 521 people

I didn't get that at all. There's a couple moments that stood out, gave me the impression that he's just a rich a-hole who will step on anyone to make another buck.

When she suggested he won't release his tax returns because he pays no federal taxes and he interjected with "that makes me smart". I think he might have been specifically talking about the couple of years in the past when he didn't pay, but it sure sounded like he just admitted that he never pays.

When she said he rooted for the housing market crisis so he make money and he said "that's called business". Well, he's not wrong. But that doesn't give the impression that he cares about anyone other than himself.

When she said he doesn't pay his bills and gave the example of the architect, and he responded by saying the guy probably didn't do a good job. He really should have been prepared for that guy, Hillary has had an ad out about him for awhile. And the ad includes quotes from Trump saying what a wonderful job the guy did. Compound that with his multiple bankruptcies and other accusations of not paying contractors, he just looks like a guy who skirts his bills and screws over small businesses.

Trump started out good, he was calm and collected. Almost looked like Kellyanne had him pop a xanax before he went out. He had the edge when they were talking about trade. But it seemed to me that he got flustered as the night went on. I think her little jabs got under his skin. And he missed a golden opportunity to nail her after she gave that horrible answer when asked if police were inherently biased.

I don't think Trump hurt himself one bit with his supporters last night. But I also don't think he won anyone over, and I definitely don't see how he gave off the impression that he cares about people. Then again, as you've pointed out several times, I just don't get his appeal. 

Good summary and I agree he didn't do the best on a few of the answers you pointed out.  I guess on those nuance things I don't think they really have much effect anymore because Hillary has been droning adds on and on bashing Trump on those issues while his poll numbers have been climbing and hers falling.

My general comments about him caring for people was in the context of keeping jobs in America and making cities safe while in contrast Hillary called us all racists.   I know that wasn't her intent, but it kind of came across that way. 

His biggest mistake of the night was completely missing the opportunity to destroy her on the cyber security issue.  He flat out whiffed on it.   Something like "She made horrible choices as SoS in how she protected classified information which potentially (and likely did) risk human lives.  She has been hacked personally, her foundation has been hacked, and the DNC has been hacked.  OK, so how exactly are you going to keep our cyber security safer. " was tee'd up to hit it out of the park.

Not surprisingly, they both talked "cyber" about the way you'd expect of 70 year olds.

Hey I'm a tech guy I can nitpick

If he wants to win people over, he'll need to cut down on the flat-out lies.  His base obviously doesn't care about that but the press will hone in on it more now that they're not dealing with a 16 person republican primary.

What was a flat out lie?

I know Hillary had a few.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/09/top-five-hillary-lies-hofstra-presidential-debate/

Anyone who got their panties in a wad over Trump's tax statement that paying no taxes "makes him smart" can go ahead and stop taking any deductions on their tax returns.  There is not a red-blooded American on the planet who does not sit down at tax time and try to figure out how to pay the least amount of tax possible.  All this gnashing of teeth over Trump's apparent ability to pay little or no tax is beyond stupid.

I was yelling at the TV, "Bring up her emails!  Point to her ignorance and naiveté regarding cyber security!

He could have hit this one out of the park but he whiff'd.

This is another one where I think his missed a slow pitch right over the plate.

"I am a businessman and I know the tax laws and I know where all the loopholes are in the tax laws.  My tax plan will close these loopholes!  Politician can't and won't close these loopholes because they are bought and paid for by wealthy Wall Street types"

Usually it was in the form of denying something that he already said.

(paraphrasing from my memory):

Clinton pointed out he had claimed global warming to be a hoax created by China, and then he denied it during the debate.
Also the debate moderator even called him out when he said he didn't support the war in Iraq.

I'll go hit the fact checking sites at lunchtime

Business tax law is also crazy complex and would be a political mess trying to explain.

I own a single business and the first several years had a lot of large purchases and took some pretty heavy losses while we got ramped up.  I carried those losses over and continued to make purchases in the business and took every deduction I legally could.
Just a few weeks ago I purchased a new car for the business that I can fully depreciate and offset my taxes yet again for 2016.  It effectively makes the car cost half what it really costs because it's a business expense.

Now if I were a politician I could easily be on the stage getting beat up over "not paying my fair share" and not paying taxes on the business but it's so much more complicated than that.
I've paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in payroll tax, I've generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales tax, I've employed 15 people who are all paying taxes and I of course pay a lot of personal taxes on everything I own and purchase and simply re-invest a lot of money in the business rather than take it out and let uncle sam pillage it.

Now in contrast I'm just a small business owner with an extremely simple tax return both personal and within the business.  Trumps are off the charts complex with his hundreds of different companies all over the world.